2010 starts – and it’s back to the blog
Well I ended up taking quite a bit of a pause from this blog. The last time I wrote was about three weeks ago, and in that time I finished the final assignments of the Fall term of my MAPP (Masters in Applied Positive Psychology) program – which is both good and bad. Good to have assignments done (and my final grades are looking quite good, thank you very much!) and good to have one term done, but bad because it means I only have four months of this amazing experience left!
However, these four months are going to be great and this first class weekend back was a great start with David Cooperrider’s course on Positive Organizations.
If you follow me on Twitter (@LVSConsulting) then today you would have read a series of tweets of David Cooperrider quotes. Here’s a selection of some of my favourites:
All change begins in the imagination.
Simple face to face conversations can change the world.
Changing the envisioned image of the future can change the future.
What a gift it is to be around someone who sees you with an appreciative eye.
The vision of the future of an organization resides in its inner dialogue.
Positive change is in the art of the question. Unconditional positive questions.
when you focus on the good, a new richness of vocabulary emerges.
through an assumption of deficit-based change, we have created the model of organizations as problems to be solved. // but deficit-based change is exhausting, results in more hierarchy, fewer images of possibility, breakdowns in relations.
Why not study what you really want to see created in the organization? // study moments of great engagement instead of moments of low morale.
Human systems move in the direction of their inquiry.
Ask positive questions that SOAR: strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results.
Overall, it was a fabulous day and a half with an amazing man. The way he talks is inspirational, and although he can run Appreciative Inquiry summit with hundreds or thousands of people, he has a dynamically personal touch as he lectured to our class of 45.
The recent holidays were relaxing, and I was happy not to set an alarm for two weeks, but now I’m all positively energized again about my consulting and coaching work – and the positive change that can be created in the organizations around us.
David Cooperrider on the Discovery and Design of Positive Institutions
I am an unabashed David Cooperrider fan. I was first exposed to Appreciative Inquiry several years ago and loved it at first sight – how uplifting! how positive! And why wouldn’t you consider what works within an organization as well as looking for areas to improve? It just made a lot of sense to me.
So I was thrilled to make it into the room to hear David speak at the WCPP. He talked about how the research behind positive organizations (one of the pillars of Positive Psychology) is growing and the business case is solidifying. He shared with us work that he has done with some amazing organizations, including the US Navy and the United Nations. So if you think that your organization is too hierarchical or too bureaucratic to use Appreciative Inquiry, then think again!
Like many other areas of Pos Psych, AI (Appreciative Inquiry) is moving into sustainability – how can AI work with organizations, internationally, to solve the world’s climate issues, to solve grinding poverty, to solve conflicts? The answers are not easy, but the discovery process is fascinating and elevating.
David commented that most of the world, including most of the organizations, are locked into a “deficit” mode, functioning on an unwritten rule: “let’s fix what’s wrong and let the good stuff look after itself”. This has resulted in an unrealized metaphor: organizations are problems to be solved, instead of believing that organizations have problems. A fine and incredibly important distinction.
The shift to Appreciative Inquiry (appreciate the best of what is, imagine what might be, design what should be, create what will be) is suggesting a new metaphor: organizations are alive “appreciative systems”, universes of strengths via relationship with others. How powerful and moving. So now, we are looking at how to use strengths positively and transformationally.
David shared a new notion of “pro-fusion” (positive fusion) with stages around the idea of transformational positivity. What happens when strength connects with strength? When hope connects with hope? He proposes:
- elevate and extend: the elevation of inquiry into the appreciable world, the extension of relatedness and the awe of gratitude
- broaden and build: the profusion of strengths (see the work done by Barbara Fredrickson)
- establish and eclipse: the activation of energy, the creation and installation of the new positive organizational reality
David concluded by indicating that what matters most is our relationships with others – we need a radical reorientation from “self” to “other” as no one can live in isolation.
I certainly agree with him. It’s interesting to see, over the past three or four generations, how our family units have changed and the parallel shift from having a career for life to transitory jobs, from villages raising children to parents (sometimes alone) raising children in detached living residences… Organizations have become the place where we get much of our social and interpersonal interactions these days. Don’t we want them to be places of strength and positivity where we can be at our best and contribute to a greater societal whole?
What do you think?
